Key announcements

Due to maintenance, some of our online forms and systems will be unavailable from 6:00am on Saturday 30 March to 7:00am on Monday 1 April. We are sorry for any inconvenience. To find out more about the section 114 notice, visit our section 114 page

Appeals

You can appeal at a school where you have applied and been refused admission.

If you plan to appeal, read the advice carefully. You can only appeal against the refusal of a place at a school that is currently one of your live preferences.

Appeals are heard and decided by panels that are independent of the council and the school(s) you may appeal for.

It is important you understand that the circumstances in which an appeal panel may uphold an infant class size appeal (reception class, year 1 or year 2 only) are extremely limited.

For an appeal to be successful, an appeal panel must be satisfied that:

  • the admission of additional children would not breach the infant class size limit
  • the child would have been offered a place if the published admission arrangements had been properly implemented
  • the child would have been offered a place if the arrangements had not been contrary to mandatory provisions in the School Admissions Code and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and/or
  • the decision to refuse admission was not one that a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case

Appeals are generally only successful if you or your child have exceptional reasons for needing admission to a particular school.

There are no guarantees that any appeal will be successful. Below you can find a table of the number of heard and successful appeals administered by the council over the last 3 years.

Percentage of successful appeals from 2020 to 2022
School year Number of appeals heard Percentage of successful appeals
Reception intake 2020 187 1.6%
Reception intake 2021 111 0.9%
Reception intake 2022 91 0%

If you want to appeal, the closing date for submitting your written appeal is Wednesday 15 May 2024.

If you submit an appeal after this date, it will be classed as a late appeal and will be heard after the on-time appeals, and it may not be heard before the beginning of September 2023.

You will be able to access the appeal form online from 9:00am on 16 April 2024.


Page last updated: 26 March 2024

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